It is far too long since I last blogged – apologies but I have been very busy. My business (corporate/financial video) work has been pretty full on and I have become fairly involved in village life, committees and clubs - eg books, gardening, the community shop, the annual fete etc.. At the same time, obviously, I have been manically researching/buying plants and physically planting in the garden and greenhouse to get the first season going, leaving me little time to write, film, edit blogs and their videos etc. – so apologies but this one just has photos.
Anyway, to the garden.
It’s finished, in construction terms. The day at the end of April that the last of the 20+ skips was carted away, the new gravel went down on the drive and we filled the pond was a great day. I said fond farewells to Dermot and Chris 2. Dermot had been with me five days a week, for seven months, so it was a bit of a shock – for the dogs and me. The next day I was suddenly alone - with acres of beds to plant.
My credit and debit cards of course rose to the challengs and I am really happy with the new garden. My dream paths (based on the photo from a book – see previous blog) have been re-created in different stones and colours for this garden and I love them.
The model left and the final path right
So what I have learned this summer about my new garden and its plants? Well lots of course, some of which is below.
Take great care with soil additives
Since the last skip left I have been planting - and weeding – non-stop. The ten tons of horse manure dug in, it transpires, were full of grass, nettle and thistle seeds. Much worse, however, were the tons of “weed-free” topsoil I got from Bradfords. These turned out to be full of horribly spikey, very virulent weeds plus lots of others. Be warned – be very careful where you get your topsoil from and never buy it from Bradfords. The topsoil was put almost everywhere and the weed problem now is so serious that I have decided that, henceforth, I shall only buy aged, bagged, horse manure and much more expensive, top quality, weed-free-guaranteed topsoil - but never from Bradfords.
Just some of the weeds in Bradford's 'weed-free' topsoil
The only truly weed-free input was the 14 tons of cooked soil improver/compost I got from the dump via Viridor. Thoroughly recommended!
Flowering plant learnings
I moved in June 2014 and the garden was created in time for its first full summer. It’s doing really well (on the whole) and looking pretty good - at least better than I had expected in a few months. Obviously lots of trees, shrubs, roses and other perennials that’ll get bigger and fill out are just starting, but I have already managed to create some clumps of colour and texture, and height with new trees, climbers, sweet peas, runner beans, Lupins, Delphiniums and a host of other plants.
Buy in large, odd quantities
In my smaller London garden, as a plant lover, I wanted one of everything I could cram in. Though tempting to do the same with even more plants in this larger space, I decided it would simply look too ‘bitty’. So, apart from trees, major shrubs and certain specimen plants, I have had to learn to buy in quantity to create ‘clumps’ of colour, shape and texture and so that one can repeat or mirror a colour/texture effect elsewhere in the garden.
For some reason one is supposed to buy in odd numbers so I bought 3 x Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ for example despite knowing how huge each one would get, 3 x every Geum, 5 or 7 times other things especially some grasses, but with one grass (Nasselta tunuissima) I have bought about 15. However, if you read the article here you’ll see that after 7, ‘even’ numbers are not a problem. It also explains why we buy in odd numbers.
And I must say this approach is paying dividends. The garden already looks quite full and voluptuous in parts and somewhat cohesive. It certainly doesn’t look as formal, meagre and bitty in its first Summer as my London garden did when it was first planted. 12 years have at least taught me something!
London on first planting (left) and here (right) - the grass helps.
However, I have also learned that, sometimes, large quantities are too much. I planted about 36 sweet peas up five wigwams and after filling every room in the house, giving weekly bunches to all my neighbours and the shop, I still couldn’t keep up with all the cutting required. It’ll be three wigwams next year and around 22 plants.
Aspect is no guarantee
This garden is North-facing but I have had some rude shocks. Firstly, it is bathed in sunshine almost all day in Summer (when it’s not been raining of course). The BBC told us the other day that the most rainfall this August was recorded in Motcombe, Dorset. Motcombe is five minutes from here, so you may sympathise with me now.
However, despite the rain, many of the shade-loving plants I planned and ordered online over Winter/early Spring were struggling. I’ve even had to plant an unplanned tree - Catalpa bignoides Aurea - towards the house, to create more shade for them. No great problem – any excuse to plant a new tree is welcome.
It is also very windy here. We are in a wide valley and the winds whistle through. Someone locally said to me “if you’ve got views you get winds” and it’s so true. Views, per se, are open vistas with few windbreaks whether you are on the top of a hill, in an open valley or by the sea. And with this year’s strange location of the Gulf Stream we’ve also had lots of colder NE and NW winds as well as the prevailing South Westerlies.
But I love my views and do not plan to hide them. So I am already thinking about adapting my plant choices. For instance, I planted a number of large flowered, early, purple Clematis up the rose parade – Daniel Deronda, Lasurstern, Kinju Atarishii and Mrs Cholmondeley for example. They flowered well initially but were blasted by the early summer winds so their petals looked pretty dreadful much of the time.
Luckily, I also planted later-flowering Clematis (C. ‘Prince Charles’, C. ‘Wisley’, C. ‘North Star’ etc) which are smaller but more profusely flowered, and they have done really well in July/August and have looked fabulous for over six weeks.
Clematis 'Wisley' left and Clematis 'Prince Charles' right
I was about to dig out all the large-flowered, early, Clematis to replace them with smaller-flowered ones when they suddenly did a second flowering in August and looked fab.. The winds were lighter and they added beauty and colour again. So I can’t decide whether to replace them with viticellas, alpinas etc or to keep them.
My feeling is that they will eventually be more sheltered by the Wisteria, Lonicera and roses they will be growing through on the arches. At the moment they are the fastest, tallest growers and thus very exposed to the winds. In three years’ time they’ll just be part of the mix and will be much more sheltered by the other plants around them - at least I hope so. At the moment they have been spared to live to grow another day.
Create a ‘Limbusetum’ for impulse purchases
Despite all my careful planting plans I am a sucker for something new, different, interesting and pretty, especially if it is scented - or a tree. At the end of the day I have to admit to being somewhat more of a plant lover than an ‘overall garden look’ lover. But I also know I have to create and grow this space as a successful ‘garden’.
I have now discovered all manner of nurseries, garden centres and ‘gardens with plant shops’ within a one/two hour drive of here and have had enormous fun visiting them, often. As a result I have made a number of impulse purchases. Many of these have gone straight into beds either as permanent or filler plants. But an equal number arrived home without an obvious planting spot. As 'plants in limbo' they were placed in a special ‘waiting area’ in the garden nicknamed The Limbusetum (‘cos it must be in Latin) where they sit in their pots while I study them, think and eventually decide on their fate.
Some of these plants have defeated me and I have given them to other people for example a Vitex Agnus-castus – the Chaste Tree. I have seen it in its new home and it's looking fab. which makes me very happy.
Others have been planted eg a Heptacodium jasminoides (syn. micinoides) - which is quite rare so it eventually got its own special place, in the lawn, and I am just waiting for its autumn flowering. A Zelgova serrata ‘Goblin’ is now in the ‘oil tank’ bed and a yellow/orange Salvia ‘Golden Wonder’ (x 3 of course) now looks fab in the long border with the red and orange roses.
Above: Heptacodium jasminoides syn. micinoides
And I have also discovered some plants are worth giving a second chance. In Spring, on impulse, I bought three small, evergreen, white flowered Iberis ‘Masterpiece’ which I’d never seen before. But I didn’t plant them. Almost immediately I regretted buying them. They were a bit too upstanding/formal/’municipal bedding’ looking for my taste so they languished in The ‘Limbusetum’ without enough water and started looking tatty. I was about to bin them when I decided to give them a last chance. I planted them around the Styrax japonica ‘Pink Chimes’ and they have prospered, flowered and looked seriously fab ever since. They formed a strong, white, centre to the bed over the Summer which was very pleasing. They are still in full flower now and they don’t seem to need dead-heading, so are great value plants, especially because they’ll be evergreen when the flowers eventually go. Wow. I am so glad I saved them!
Iberis 'Masterpiece' above
Vegetable learnings
Veg took a bit of a back seat earlier this year whilst I was getting the flower borders going but I managed to start tomatoes, red peppers, runner and mange tout beans from seed in the greenhouse as soon as it was built.
Risk some beans
Beans are my favourite green veg and they also deliver height, flowers and a bumper crop from a small space. After hardening them off in the cold frame I began planting them out on 14th May.
There I was, carefully curling the third of them round the 12 attractive hazel stems I’d formed into a frame when Reg (who you know is my lawn cutter, edger and weeding man but who also turns out to be an allotment veg specialist), arrived behind me - it must have been a Thursday.
“Ooh, errh, I wouldn’t be doing that now Rosie. It be a mite early. I’ve not even started my bean seeds yet.” he said in his beautiful Dorset brogue.
“But it’s May!” I protested. “I’m allowed to plant them out in May.”
“Ooozzzh” (a sucking in of air through teeth) “but, there’s more frost a-coming….and winds. Them’ll struggle.” he advised.
As an ex-Londoner I took his advice and stopped planting them out. The rest didn’t go in until mid June, when Reg gave me the nod.
Meanwhile, the three original bean plants remained in the soil. He was right. They struggled. They looked wind-beaten, pale and mankey for about a month - but they prevailed. They are now voluptuous glories, well up and over the top of the frame and feeding me a crop of deliciousness every night. The others are just fruiting and some are still in flower.
So I suppose I have learned it’s worth ignoring local knowledge a bit and taking the risk with a few veg.. However, I hope now to have a succession of beans over the Autumn rather than a glut all at once, so Reg’s advice has actually been a great help. Next year, I shall plant them out at least two weeks apart – but still start in May!
Don’t put courgettes in a small raised veg/salad bed
A couple of weeks or so ago I finally sowed some lettuce/salad, beetroot and turnip seeds in my 6 inch raised bed. They are supposed to be OK sown in August and all are things I love to eat or cook with. Turnips in particular are a much unappreciated vegetable in my book and quite hard to find in supermarkets. They are delicious when fast cooked, small and whole, (especially with gin/) or, when larger, they make a fabulous flavour and texture introduction to almost any slow cooked meat or veg pot.
As an aside, isn’t it interesting that foods fed to cattle are often disdained by the humans in the same country. Turnips were/still are traditional cattle fodder in Northern Europe in the same way Avocado pears are in India.
When I first lived in Mumbai in 1994 it was really hard to buy an avocado in a ‘people’s’ market despite the fact they grew millions of them – because they were grown simply as cattle fodder. ‘Marketeers’ were horrified when I enquired for them. Things changed eventually as more westerners came in and demanded them – and their price soared of course. But the lesson here is that one country’s cattle food can be another country’s delicacy. Cattle food need not be disgusting to humans. And I urge you to re-visit the turnip. You will discover an incomparable flavour.
Anyway, back to the veg bed. I weeded it, raked the special (non Bradshaws) topsoil I had put in, made it beautifully flat and friable, then drew my half inch deep lines, six to eight inches apart along a tool to keep the plantings straight and I was very careful about the seed sowing. After an hour or so of bending I stood and proudly surveyed my newly sown and clearly labelled veg bed. And then it rained all night. Very satisfying!
The next morning I strolled down the garden to revel in it, only to discover that one or more local cats had decided it was ideal cat litter. They had dug, scattered the seeds and labels, and generally messed the beds. Ughhh and aargh!
A week or so later the locally donated courgette and gourd plants (which one simply cannot refuse from new friends) in the same bed became so huge that some of my, now wiggly, seed lines were covered in huge leaves – just as the seeds were germinating. I took a knife to the courgette leaves. Given all this disruption I am praying the newly seeded veg will survive and prosper.
To date this experience has taught me to keep seeded veg well away from courgettes and the like, and possibly that I’ll need to cover the raised bed to keep the cats at bay. Watch this space.
Stick to your colour schemes
Most of the original colour plans have worked out well but I heeled in/planted a few roses too early in the Kennet bed. Pink R. ‘Scentsation’ and pink R. Eglantyne’ are in what is now essentially a ‘hot’ bed.
The peninsular bulge of this (at present my favourite bed/most successful planting) is full of orange Geum ‘Princess Juliana’ which has flowered since May because of all the deadheading, It’s finicky but worth it. These now spill into the fabulously tactile, soft-effect grass Nasselta tenuissima (used to be called Stipa tenuissima - maiden’s hair), which edges the bed.
The peninsular bulge (left) and, in it, Geum 'Princess Juliana', Neselta tenuissima, hemerocalis and Verbena bonariensis (right)
Beside/around/behind them are tall, thin and elegant Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Emily McKenzie’, tall red and orange Alstromeria (tubers brought from London). They are backed by even taller, purple, Verbena ‘bonariensis’ and tall grasses Miscanthus ‘Silver Feather’, M. sinensis ‘Strictus’ and ‘Ghana’ as well as Pennisetum ‘Red Buttons’, self seeded, silver leaved and opulent purple and dark red poppies, Alium sphaerocephalon and dark purple Dahlias amongst them.
Crocosmia Lucifer (left) and Alstromeria (right)
They are backed by even taller, purple, Verbena ‘bonariensis’ and tall grasses Miscanthus ‘Silver Feather’, M. sinensis ‘Strictus’ and ‘Ghana’ as well as Chleome (purple) grown from seed this year.
Cleome grown from seed and now 2 metres tall
In between are grass Pennisetum ‘Red Buttons’, self seeded, silver leaved and opulent purple and dark red poppies, Alium sphaerocephalon and dark purple, cactus Dahlias.
Allium sphaerocephalon
This glory of colour and texture then morphs, through three clumps of grass, into a cooler, lighter blue/purple/silver zone of Buddleja Lochinch (with its orange centres), Galega x hartlandii ‘Lady Wilson’, Gemphostigma virgatum ‘Silver Butterfly’, 3 x Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’, and lilac/mauve Tulbargia (Silver Lace and Fair Star), some purple Salvia ‘Schwellenburg’ and then waves back into more Nasselta tenuissima and Pennisetum Fairy Tales and P. Karley Rose, and the hot colours of Hemerocalis ‘Chicago Apache’, Helenium ‘Mardi Gras’, red and orange Dahlias, Rudbeckias in a variety of hot colours, Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and G. ‘Mrs Bradshaw’ contrasted with a purple Agastache ‘Black Adder’- so that the very end of the Kennet bed sort of mimics the peninsular bulge in colours and yextures but is a bit lower.
The two pink roses look very out of place amongst all this colour ‘heat’ and will have to be moved. I have identified a suitable spot (behind the swing seat) and will do the deed in Winter after they have finished flowering. They will be planted with two other roses my mother has found which have white stems! (They are a gift from a friend of Mum's and very unusual, as far as I am aware.)
Interestingly, three other pink roses in the Kennet bed (Pretty Lady, The Lady Gardener and R. Glauca) may survive where they are. The first (PL) is pale apricot to start and then goes white. It’s in the cooler, transition, section and seems to work OK. The second (TLG) is an orangey pink and also sort of works though I am not very impressed by her form at the moment. And the Rosa Glauca is really grown for her red hips. She is behind the cooler part and teamed with a red and purple Salvia. Her grey/green leaves go really well with the scheme and, because her small bright pink blooms are so vivid, I think they’ll work where they are next year.
So, overall I am very pretty pleased with the garden in its first year. I have a number of problems which will be dealt with and will be covered in the next blogs. I also need to update you on the pond, its planting and fish, and the building of the bridge; as also on the trees I have planted. These blogs should now come much more quickly than this one did!
It was small but almost perfectly formed. It was the Spring garden show at The Garden Museum at Lambeth Palace. On Sunday a friend and I paid a visit. Entry was cheap at £5. The show consisted of about ten plant stalls - some outside and some in the church, plus a number of other stalls selling things of interest like greeting cards with fabulous photos of plants which made me very jealous and were only £1.50 each - see bloomsofpenge.com.
The event was well attended though I have to say the lunch and coffee tables seemed the busiest places but that may have been because we arrived at about 11.30am and the attendees were inevitably somewhat on the older side.
There were three real highlights for me. The first was that the outside stalls were set amongst the fabulous churchyard which is so evocative. Ancient tombs and stones surrounded by ‘wild’ planting in one section (daffs, tulips, Brunnera, grasses) and the other stalls amongst the formal box beds of the knot garden with a fabulous range of interesting plants.
And all surrounded by modern office buildings on one side and the ancient palace on another, a little green haven amongst the busy roads around Lambeth Bridge and St Thomas’ hospital.